Status update #1: still no title!

Before we went away to Spain, I sent the latest draft to a freelance editor (a friend of a friend, just starting out) to get some feedback from a fresh pair of eyes with no ties to me. She came back with some very helpful comments and suggestions. In most cases, my immediate reaction was “yep, that’s what it needed” and I was able to fix things right away. In one case, the suggested new chapter was a complete failure. That’s not to say I couldn’t make it work, but clearly it’s not coming easily, so I decided to leave that aside for now and send it on to another friend (and former professional editor) to get the last round of comments.

I suspect that some more revisions will need required – and, of course, lots of housekeeping fixes – but after that, I really hope to be done.

I have no idea what will happen then. I guess I’ll wait and see what I’m prepared to do.

I actually did a fair bit of reading on the trip (or listening, in the case of my major audiobook project). There’s not much else to do on the plane and even I can only look out a train window for so long.

Here’s the best of what I read.

FICTION

MIddlemarch, by George Eliot. This was the aforementioned audiobook, all 31 hours of it. I thought it was time. And I thought the book was excellent – funny, wry, and smart. The narration by Nadia May really helped capture the characters and the emotion of the story. I think if I’d tried to read it (especially on a plane), I’d have missed some of the nuance.

Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy. Climate change, a remote island, a mysterious woman, a family with secrets. All this could easily be overplayed and overwrought, but McConaghy makes it (mostly) believable. The intensely evocative descriptions of the remote island near Antarctica and of the wilds of Australia help. I was also quite excited that the backstory of one of the characters bore an interesting resemblance to a memoir I also read during this period.

In Universes, by Emet North. A cut above much ‘alternate universes’ fare, with the focus on the characters and their struggles, in all worlds, to find a fulfilling life. Bonus: alien-possessed bears and weird taxidermy.

The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne. I liked Bryne’s The Girl in the Road from 2014 and finally got around this new one. Spread over three narratives, each 1,000 years apart, the book weaves together the story of twins ascending the throne of an ancient Mayan kingdom, an American woman searching for her heritage in Belize, and a far-future society facing questions about the true nature of their past and the world they’ve built.

NON-FICTION

Wavewalker, by Suzanne Heywood. The aforementioned memoir. Heywood recounts her unconventional and often difficult childhood living her father’s dream of living a life at sea, regardless of the cost to his family.

A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf. Because every woman who writes should read this. So I finally did.

I’m the type of person who starts my stories about Barcelona by saying “well, I didn’t get pickpocketed, so that’s good.” I was pickpocketed in the metro in Rome (my own fault) so I spent a fair bit of time researching ways to avoid it. My current travel purse has a wallet chained into it! But I wasn’t, and everything was fine. We took the metro and the bus without incident. In fact, the Barcelona metro is very nice: well-signed, easy to use, and mostly full of people just getting from one place to another. Just like the Toronto Transit Commission, whose trains I rode just about every day of my working life (and still take several times a week without the least worry).

With that out of the way, we enjoyed Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia is batshit and incredibly beautiful. The stained glass! That light! We heaved ourselves up the hills to the Park Guell and then took a taxi home (one of two times we broke down and took a cab – the second time was when we got hopelessly lost trying to navigate our way up to the Montjuic castle).

We took a guided day trip to Girona and the Dali Museum at Figueres. We took in a choral concert and a tour at the very lovely Palau de la Musica Catalana. We found a place to buy local vermouth to take home (this was actually quite hard. You can buy wine etc in the grocery store but if you want something special, it’s a challenge). We went to the beach, because we figured we should. We did not swim.

We ate some of the best meals of the trip here. I can highly recommend Maleducat and La Mundana.

At the Barcelona airport, you have to go through passport control to get to the boarding area. This was no great hardship, as the passport control agents all looked like actors starring in a TV show about Barcelona airport passport control.

Anyway, we had a great trip and would love to go back to see a fraction of the many things we missed.

We took the train from Granada to Sevilla, arriving in the early afternoon with some time for exploring the old city before heading to an excellent dinner at El Disparate (I still dream about that Iberian pork shoulder ….).

On the agenda over the next few days:

• a rooftop tour of the cathedral. A fascinating change from the normal cathedral tour. It also provided a great view of the city.
• A cruise on a small boat (about 10 people) on the canal. It was fun and interesting, though the highlight was probably watching the flotilla of school kids learning to kayak and paddleboard, laughing and shouting throughout.
• Real Alcazar palace and gardens. Again, very grateful the 15th century Spanish decided the Moorish architecture was just too pretty to destroy.
• a flamenco show at Tablao Flamenco Las Setas. Much more theatrical than the caves in Granada but impressive and dramatic just the same
• a good wander around the Plaza de Espana and the Parque de Maria Luisa
• acquisition of flamenco accessories (of course)

And best of all, no hills!

We only had two and a half days in Granada but we tried to make the most of it. On the night of our arrival, a fellow writer and her husband took us to their favourite bars for vermouth, wine, and tapas. This is not something we would ever do alone – we’re much more “go and sit down for dinner” types – and we had a great time.

The next day, we went to the Alhambra. (Which involves climbing a hill. Of course). It’s astonishingly, insanely beautiful. I’m very grateful that Ferdinand and Isabella didn’t decide that being Moorish made it evil and therefore should be destroyed. I like to imagine them looking at it and thinking “well, it was made by those pagans, but it’s just so beautiful — let’s keep it. We can put up a picture of a saint or two. That’ll fix it.” The world would be poorer without it.

And there were cats, one of which let me pet it. So that was good.

More hills, on the other side this time, and up to the Albaicin neighbourhood for some excellent views. That night we went (up the hill again) to a flamenco show in the Sacromonte caves. It was an incredible experience. The venue fits about 35 people, and you could reach out and touch the dancers (ok, don’t do that.) There was a guitarist, a singers, and three dancers, all of whom brought passion and nuance to their performances. If you’re ever in Granada, I can highly recommend Cueva Los Parrones.

The next day, we wandered around the town, checking out the Federico Garcia Lorca park, touring his former home, and then heading over to another park by the canal, where we watched a dog romp in the shallow water and a group practice swing dancing in a gazebo.

I thought “this would be a nice place to live” – and then I remembered that the average temperature in the summer is 35 degrees celsius.

We had a trip planned to Spain for our 30th wedding anniversary. In May 2020. Yeah, that didn’t happen. So this year, we decided to celebrate our 35th there instead. We added a few days to the original plan, added an additional city, and just after my flamenco adventures were wrapped up, off we went. It was a great trip, full of art, food, parks, food, vermut, history, wine, cats, food, incredible architecture, food….

First up, some pictures from Madrid. I quite liked Madrid, even if much of it seems to be uphill (this will be a theme for Spain). We stayed near the Atocha train station and quite near a metro line (like, right over the metro line, which did mean earplugs were required). The neighborhood was funky and relaxed, we discovered two quite lovely restaurants (Juan Raro and La Fisna Wine Bar), and we could walk to all the main places we wanted to go. These included the ‘big three’ museums (Reina Sofia, Prado, and Thyssen-Bornemisza) and Retiro Park. The metro and the local bus system got us out San Lorenzo de El Escorial (the monastery turned royal palace) and provided us a good view of the countryside on the way.

Madrid was particularly rich in interesting signs and graffiti, which always makes me happy. On the last day, we also discovered ‘public cats’, which was to also be a theme of the trip.

(Oh, and most of my books are on sale on Amazon.com US until the end of June. Just in case.)

The dancers split the cost of having a photographer shoot one of the shows and here are some of the images (just ones of me, as I don’t feel comfortable sharing the other ones). I have the least ‘flamenco’ hair ever, but what can one do?

The opening piece, which was brief and mostly posing.

From Romance Sonambulo (which we called Verde for simplicity). It’s based on a poem by Lorca (there was a lot of Lorca in the show) and seemed to be everywhere when I was Spain in early May.

From my performance of the adaptation I did of the opening monologue from Euripides’ MEDEA. I had to tape down my mic, and got rather carried away with it. I made good use of my Annie Thompson caftan for this.

I had a brief dance sequence in the second last number in the show.

And then it was off to Spain. Photos to come.

Our big flamenco show is done. Six straight nights of rehearsal and then two shows on Sunday. I feel pretty good about it. Sadly, I have no pictures as this point. I was part of the opening tableau, danced in two numbers, performed my adaptation of the nurse’s opening monologue from Euripides’ MEDEA, and recited another poem from the POV of an 8-year-old boy.

There was a lot of hiding out in the classroom/dressing room and waiting, some deep breathing, and a reasonable amount of fear of screwing up. (I don’t think I did, at least not too badly).

Watching the rehearsal videos was an interesting experience. I decided I have what I call “dancer dysmorphia”. It’s not so much a concern about how fat I look (though believe me, there was no little angst about that). It’s that when I’m dancing my body feels behaving in ways that don’t seem to show on the video. I feel as if my arm positions are strong and rigid but in fact they look like wet noodles. I feel as if I’m upright and my neck is a thousand miles long. Instead, I look like a hunchbacked turtle. It’s very disconcerting. There’s definitely value in watching the rehearsal videos, especially to make sure you’re in sync with the rest of the group, that your arm isn’t blocking your face, etc. But you definitely have to put the visual impression of that performance behind you when it’s time to do the next one. You have to smile (or not, depending on the piece) and believe you can do it.

As one experienced performer told us, “you have to own it.” Or, as they used to say about punk: “You have to mean it, man”.

Sale news: A TERRIBLE BEAUTY will be on sale on May 1st for $1.99, if you should be interested.

About to enter a week of daily flamenco rehearsals in preparation for the show. Just got back from a quick road trip to Kingston with my brother and father. Planning for an upcoming overseas trip. Not sleeping much. Needless to say, not writing much either.

But I did finish THE DELUGE by Stephen Markley, which is very long and I could only read in small sections because it was too distressingly ‘on the nose’ right now. But it’s very good.

But here is a decent photo I managed to get of art on display at the sculpture garden at Huff Estates in Prince Edward County.

I am still getting reading done, in between flamenco practices! Here are some of the things that have stuck with me.

FICTION

There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak. A beautifully-written novel about stories, how they shape us, and how they connect us to the past. One of those books where I promptly have to transcribe a particularly beautiful passage. In fact, the one quoted below:

“We carve our dreams into objects, large and small. The emotions we hold but fail to honor, we try to express through the things we create, trusting that they will outlive us when we are gone, trusting that they will carry something of us through the layers of time, like water seeping through rocks. It is our way of saying to the next generations, those we will never get to meet, “Remember us.” It is our way of admitting we were weak and flawed, that we made mistakes, some inevitable, others foolish, but deep within we appreciated beauty and poetry, too. Each historical artifact, therefore, is a silent plea from ancestors to descendants, “Do not judge us too harshly.” We make art to leave a mark for the future, a slight kink in the rivers of stories, which flows too fast and too wildly for any of us to comprehend.”

The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, Melinda Taub. I listened to this as an audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed it.

And the Rain My Drink, Han Suyin. This is an example of the breadcrumb trail that informs my reading. I read Legacy of Violence, a non-fiction book about abuses in the British Empire, which mentioned this classic novel about Malaysia (about which I knew virtually nothing). A tough, clear-eyed, poetic book about colonialism, opportunism, blindness, and desire.

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman. What happens after Camelot fails? This fast-paced ride through Arthurian legend asks a serious question in an unfailingly entertaining way.

NON-FICTION

The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, Neko Case. The musician’s hard-scrabble upbringing and subsequent discovery of a home in music is told in vivid prose. I loved it.

Sleepwalkers, by Christopher Clark. I also have a “podcast to book” pipeline, and this one came from listening to The Rest is History. The book details the lead up to WWI from the perspectives of the main players, and how each power made choices that pushed them into a war most of them didn’t want.

Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Yeah, Meta probably shouldn’t have taken out that injunction against their former employee because of this book. There’s still a six-month wait for it at the library (I scored mine on a “skip-the-line” offer). It’s a quick read that displays the full weirdness, greed, and blindness of the top ranks of the company.

You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song, Glenn McDonald and Mood Music, Liz Pelly. I ended up reading these books about music streaming weeks apart, which provided some interesting contrasts. The first is far more optimistic than the second about the impact on the experience of music for both listeners and musicians. As a subscriber to Apple Music who nonetheless still listens to full albums that I own via Sonos, I admit to teetering towards the negative side. But not enough to change.